The Argonauts: book review
It’s relatively easy to admire a book that acknowledges or expands perspectives you largely share, especially if is skilfully written. That’s not the reason I admire The Argonauts, however. This takes a reader —...
Category: aesthetics
A Brand of Writing
A couple of months ago I attended a two-day Masterclass in Food Writing at the British Library (for me, always an awe-inspiring institution). Designed and taught by the food writer Mallika Basu, the class...
Absence of Mind: Book Review
Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. If you’re reading Robinson’s essays, you probably have already read her novels. You may well approach the essays as I did,...
Marcella! A Review of Amarcord
This one is a memoir, rather than a cookbook. It’s full of detailed information: places, times, details about food and preparation and teaching and publishing — and marriage. There’s a particularly memorable contrast between...
Field Green: Book Review
It must be a memoir. A reader — or a fact-checker — could challenge any number of things, especially names, including the name of the author. But there can be no doubt about the...
Needing a Translator
We’d been skyping for months, both really enjoying it, I think — my husband kept noticing how much laughter was coming from the room where the really big computer lives. I was translating Lambert’s...